


devour these altars

by ivorygraves



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dark, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Post-Season/Series 02, Religion, The Author Regrets Everything, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5789374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygraves/pseuds/ivorygraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"God is in all things. Even you." </p><p>And that seems like a fucking hilarious joke, now that she's dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	devour these altars

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, okay? This is really sad and weird and fucked up and is based entirely on [this](http://katesseth.tumblr.com/post/135210846011/fdtd-au-seth-becomes-religious-after-kates-death) graphic because it's beautiful and I couldn't help myself. I am also 40k in another fic right now and needed an excuse to procrastinate on it. Hence, new fic. Yay?

* * *

 “Jesus, Jesus he says, but he’s not praying to Jesus, he’s praying to you, not to your body or your face but to that space you hold at the centre, which is the shape of the universe… How does it feel to be a god…?”

— Margaret Atwood, from “Worship,” _Murder in the Dark_

* * *

He cannot say when it begins.

He has never been one for reflection, much less when it involves himself.

All he knows is that, in the space between her living and dying, he had no use for God. He would watch her on nights when he was sober but not sober enough and sneer at her while she prayed. Like an animal searching for flesh, he would bare his teeth at her, and she would look at him like a girl who already shed too much blood.

He does not understand how she can still believe after everything they’ve been through. He cannot name the reason why it offends him so much, how she can bow her head in supplication to something that isn’t there, or worse yet — something that gave up on her long ago.

(“Don’t you _get it_?” he snarls at her one night, when the rage and pain and need to be lost to the alcohol and cheap drugs gets to his head. “You wanna know the reason why you’re in this situation? Why your little God hasn’t saved you from the bad, bad men who stole you away from your good little life?” And he gets up in her face, until his chest is almost touching hers, and he can almost see fear in her eyes before it hardens into tenacity. He grits his teeth and grips her shoulders so hard he might leave bruises. “It’s because He’s _not real_ , sweetheart,” he whispers, like he’s telling her some big, deep secret. “You’re wasting your goddamn time.”

“Just because you can’t see Him doesn’t mean He isn’t real,” she whispers back.

“Yeah?” he asks, giving her a cynical smile. “Well, then you’re praying to the biggest asshole in the universe, princess. You gotta admit — at least I didn’t abandon you.” He takes another swig from his flask, enjoying the way it burns on the way down.

She is silent for a moment. And then, so softly he almost doesn’t hear it, she says, “I’m sorry.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, louder this time, like she means it. “I’m sorry you’re in so much pain.”

“I’m not in pain, Katie,” he tells her, chuckling. “I’m letting go of the dead weight. I’m living the life.”

“Not much of a life,” she murmurs.

“Door’s that way,” he says, pointing it out to her. “You can use it anytime.”

And the look she gives him then is one he’ll never forget, even in his hazy drug-filled dreams.

Because no one has ever looked at him with as much pity as Kate Fuller.

“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” he bites out. If he were holding glass, it would shatter. “I don’t need your goddamn sweet preacher’s daughter act, all right?”

But she just shakes her head slowly and turns around.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Out the door. Which you so helpfully pointed out to me,” she says.

“You’re seriously gonna just walk away?” he asks, and in his alcohol-fueled delusions, he sees her leaving and never coming back. It doesn’t scare him. It _doesn’t._ Just like Richie leaving didn’t scare him.

“I can’t talk to you right now,” she tells him. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And Seth?” She glances over her shoulder. “God is in all things. Even you.”

And then she’s gone.)

And that seems like a fucking hilarious joke, now that she’s dead.

He wishes he could tell her how fucking _wrong_ she was, scream her name and hurl it out into the cold night like an empty beer can or one of Carlos’ limbs. He wishes he could ask her what the hell she ever saw in him; he wants to ask her why she chose him instead of the ranger all those months ago.

 _Why did you fucking trust me?_ he thinks desperately. _Why’d you put your faith in_ me _?_

These are the kind of questions he asks. Or not _asks_ , per se, but tucks away into the back of his mind for later. For what, he does not know. It’s not like she’ll walk through the door the next morning, holding out an armful of greasy diner food while he’s nursing a hangover. It’s not like she’ll just be _alive_ again.

The day he believes that is the day he might as well just end it himself.

But he thinks his questions and asks them of no one in particular, and slowly, in the empty space between the end of her life and his, he begins to wonder what she’d say anyway.

* * *

Sometimes he imagines her sitting next to him, like she used to do in his car. Sometimes he imagines her smiling, laughing, crying.

He isn’t sure if they’re memories. Probably not.

He’s sure no one’s ever smiled at him like that. Not even Kate Fuller.

 _I could never leave you_ , she told him long ago. Except she didn’t.

She’s never promised him anything.

 _Please_ , he thinks, but does not know what he’s asking for. He doesn’t even know if he’s asking for anything at all, or who he’s asking.

It sure as shit isn’t God.

 _Fuck you_ , he thinks for good measure, actually, because if He does exist then He’s the worst fucking piece of shit in any known existence anywhere, and seriously, fuck Him, fuck His angels and fuck that horse He rode on when He decided to take her away.

That is the one thing he will allow, now that he thinks about it. Because while he does not believe, in one small, shriveled corner of his heart, he hopes. He hopes that she is where she wants to be. Where she should be. After everything.

He hopes because the alternative is too fucking cruel, even to him.

* * *

  _Jesus, you must hate me_ , he thinks once.

And then, another time, _You actually put up with me for three months in that shithole._

Later on, _I must look pretty goddamn pathetic._

And sometimes, when he looks at the empire him and Richie have built, when it all becomes too much, when he’s thinking of her gentle face as he abandons her, he thinks _I’m sorry._

* * *

He thinks of how it could’ve been different.

He thinks of a thousand scenarios in which she lives.

All of them involve him staying, which is probably unrealistic.

But why the fuck should it matter? She’s dead.

She’s dead and he never got to say goodbye.

One day Richie leaves for an entire night and doesn’t come back until sunrise. When he sees him, he just shrugs, helpless and tired, and says, “I needed closure,” as if that means anything.

He must see the look on his face, because he clarifies, “I went to a church. One of those Baptist ones. And I just… sat there. And thought about everything.”

“And you didn’t burst into flames?” he asks, trying for the humor he doesn’t feel.

“It was quiet,” Richie murmurs. “Kind of peaceful, actually.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “You and the big man upstairs get some good one-on-one time?”

Richie shakes his head. “I didn’t talk to Him,” he tells him. “I just thought about her.”

“You know you don’t need a church for that,” he says.

Richie just shrugs. “Made me feel closer to her.”

He thinks about that for a long, long time.

* * *

So then later, when he’s exhausted all his excuses and given up on ever not feeling the chasm of her loss, he finds that church Richie was talking about.

He looks at that big cross and statue of Jesus and thinks, _I can’t believe I’m doing this. Are you happy?_

He doesn’t know who he’s asking, but that’s a lie.

He knows.

And it’s still stupid, because she’s still dead.

He bows his head and sighs, a sharp burst of air in the hollow space. He thinks of her voice telling him _I’m sorry you’re in so much pain._

He wonders if she can see him from — wherever.

He wonders if she can see him at all.

He isn’t sure if he’s doing this right. He isn’t sure if it’s helping or hurting or something in between.

He wishes he was like Richie, who seemed to find meaning in doing shit like this. In finding _closure_ , whatever the hell that means.

 _Shit. I’m a fucking mess_ , he thinks. _You know that? I was a mess when you were alive and I’m a mess while you’re dead. But at least I’m consistent, right?_

She doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t expect her to.

* * *

He returns every now and then.

Not every day, because that would be crazy, and because he’s busy, being a new king and all.

But he does. At least once a week.

He sits there in the dark, when no one’s around, because he can’t bring himself to sit among a congregation. He is not one of them; he does not pray to their God.

He doesn’t even know how to pray.

He’s seen her do it many times, but he’s never bothered to watch for any other reason than to get angry.

One night, after a particularly bad job, he folds his hands together in some form of invocation and tells her he wishes he had her around.

That she was a good partner. No matter what he said.

 _You were a good kid_ , he tells her. _You were a good kid and I ruined your life._

And when he feels the tears prickling the corner of his eyes, he clenches his jaw and angrily fists his hands against his pants. “Tell me what to do,” he pleads to the empty air. “Just tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to _do_?”

And he imagines her there with him, sitting next to him on that pew, thinks of her taking his shaking hand and holding it in hers.

He imagines holding it back, tight enough to bruise.

“I wish you’d done this before,” he imagines her telling him. “You could’ve, you know. I wanted you to.”

“Prayed?” he asks, confused.

But she just smiles. “No,” she says. “Not that.”

She squeezes his hand.

* * *

He doesn’t go back.

But he still thinks about her.

He thinks about her when he’s lost to oblivion, when he’s so drunk he can barely stand.

He thinks about getting high sometimes, too. But it’s not worth the screaming match with Richie — at least not right now.

Right now, he thinks of her touching him, like she did all those months ago in a drug-fueled hallucination. He thinks of her touching his face, his hands, his chest, his lips.

He thinks of touching her back. He thinks of pressing her onto her back and kissing a trail down her body, licking prayers into her flesh and worshipping her like a drowning man. He thinks of her writhing underneath him and weeping tears of joy while he eats her out, of her face contorting in pleasure and her hands gripping his hair as she surges her hips forward, begging, pleading, gasping a name that is anything but holy.

 _Seth_ , he thinks of her saying. _Seth._

 _Kate_.

He wakes up so hard it hurts.

* * *

He is ashamed.

What kind of asshole fantasizes about an underage dead girl?

Apparently Seth Gecko does.

(It reminds him of Sonja and how she once asked him _why don’t you do the world a favor and blow your brains out?_

He still doesn’t have an answer.)

He tries not to think about her anymore. He needs to do that whole moving on bullshit that self-help books and head shrinks preach about.

“It’s okay to miss her,” Richie tells him one day. “I loved her too.”

And he feels himself getting angry for some reason, feels the denial well up in his chest like the blood of a thousand crying ghosts. “It’s _not_ like that,” he says, irritated.

Richie just raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

He falls silent.

“I know you’ve been to that church,” Richie tells him. “You’ve been there more than I have.”

“Richard —”

“At least she died still loving you,” Richie says. “She died hating me.”

“Oh, come _on_ —”

“She told me to burn.”

“She was _dying_ —”

“Doesn’t mean she didn’t mean it, brother.”

He runs a frustrated hand through his hair.

“It wasn’t like that,” he says finally. “We never — it wasn’t fucking like that.”

“Why not?”

“She was _seventeen._ ”

Richie just looks at him.

* * *

Santanico gives him a long, hard look, as if she can see into some deep part of him.

Part of him resents her for looking, and the other part wants to ask her what she sees.

“What?” he snaps.

“She wouldn’t want to be worshipped,” she says evenly. “She wouldn’t want you to _deify_ her, Seth.”

“Did Richie tell you that?” he asks, and he isn’t sure if his anger is due to offense or shame. “Or are you digging around in my head?”

“If you’re looking for penance, you won’t find it.”

“Yeah? Because you’re the expert, right?”

Santanico’s eyes flash and her lip curls in disgust. There’s something heartbreakingly vulnerable in it, a monstrous kind of delicacy in watching her remember. “She wouldn’t want you to pray to her. She’d want you to love her.”

He wants to argue, but instead he turns away from her.

“That’s worse,” he whispers.

* * *

“What do you pray for?” she asks him in his dreams. “Money? Fame? Family?”

“You,” he tells her.

In his dreams, Kate smiles. He thinks he sees her eyes flicker black. “Oh, Seth,” she says. “I’m already here.”

He refuses to cry. “You’re not,” he says brokenly. “This is just a dream.”

“God is in all things,” she says simply. “Even you.”

She presses her mouth over his heart and devours the altars he’s built for her in every bleeding beat.

_Amen._


End file.
